Witten by Evan Goldberg and Jay Baruchel, directed by Michael Dowse, and starring Seann William Scott, Jay Baruchel, Liev Schreiber, Eugene Levy, and Alison Pill, amongst others, "Goon" boasts a fantastic comedic team. Surprisingly, the film depends most of all on the charm and fists of its breakout lead, an actor known first and foremost by the name of the infamous character he played in "American Pie": Stifler.
Seann William Scott is pitch-perfectly cast in the role of Doug Glatt, a boorish Massachusetts bouncer who goes viral after head-butting a minor league hockey player so hard during a brawl in the stands that the guy falls flat on his back and his helmet breaks. Called up to be an enforcer in the minor leagues to protect the PTSD-stricken all-star LaFlamme (Marc-André Grondin), Glatt brings an earnest, brutish, zealous spirit to his team, the Halifax Highlanders. And he does so with zero finesse or talent: so clumsy on the ice, he can barely skate across the rink without stumbling.
Somehow tender and vicious at the same time, the screenplay and Scott's performance both manage to delicately reconcile his Hanson Brothers'-like outbursts of sportive violence with his morally upright, puppy-eyed sensibility that is equally lovable and every bit as iconic as Rudy. At once a pariah in the eyes of his snobbish / wealthy / successful Jewish family, and a folk hero to his teammates and local Canadian hockey fans, Doug soberly and humbly heeds to his new calling as a bodyguard on ice: even as it leads him to a life of black-eyes, bruised fists, and missing teeth.
Blood-spattered, profanity laced, and ardent-hearted, Goon is a grandiose modern sports opera that is not to be missed! And neither is our deep dive podcast conversation, where we cover everything from the deeply entrenched and unspoken code of goons, to the paradoxical morality of sanctioned hockey violence, to the fanatical subculture of hockey addicts. Enjoy!
